{"id":211457,"date":"2024-04-09T07:30:35","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T11:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=211457"},"modified":"2024-04-04T10:46:40","modified_gmt":"2024-04-04T14:46:40","slug":"uconn-senior-more-than-just-a-player-she-photographs-underwater-rugby-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2024\/04\/uconn-senior-more-than-just-a-player-she-photographs-underwater-rugby-too\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Senior More Than Just a Player; She Photographs Underwater Rugby Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniela Bedoya doesn\u2019t fear the risks of blacking out, going home with a concussion, or any of the other things that could go wrong during a game of underwater rugby.<\/p>\n

Sure, the anticipation of World Cup games might threaten to get the best of her, she admits, but there\u2019s one thing that\u2019s far more nerve-wracking than playing the physical and sometimes blatantly brutal sport \u2013 putting her Sony A7 III camera in the water to take pictures of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was first training with the underwater case, even though I tested it three times and it didn\u2019t leak, I was so nervous to put my camera in and dunk it,\u201d Bedoya \u201925 (SFA) says. \u201cI\u2019m scared even today, and I\u2019ve spent about a year in the water with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bedoya comes from a family of swimmers<\/a>. Her father is a swimming coach who played underwater rugby in his home country of Colombia and introduced his daughters to it when they were old enough. Bedoya herself started swimming competitively at 7, always with the 100 and 200 butterfly on her mind, and picked up underwater rugby in high school.<\/p>\n

While the family has played part in advancing the popularity of the little-known sport in the United States \u2013 there are only a dozen teams in the country, according to the sport\u2019s national organization<\/a> \u2013 Bedoya has joined an even more elite group, that of photographers who get in the pool alongside players.<\/p>\n

\"Daniela
As an art and art history major concentrating in photography and video, she married her two loves into a single project thanks to a scholarship from the BOLD Women\u2019s Leadership Network. (Photo courtesy of Daniela Bedoya)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As an art and art history<\/a> major concentrating in photography and video, she married her two loves into a single project thanks to a scholarship from the BOLD Women\u2019s Leadership Network<\/a> that allowed her to purchase gear, spend last summer in the pool, and interview professional female sports photographers who\u2019ve jockeyed their way onto the sidelines.<\/p>\n

Family friend and Connecticut photographer David Lopez became Bedoya\u2019s mentor years ago, as she watched him work with her underwater rugby team, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would take videos and pictures and let me see what he was doing and explain why,\u201d she explains. \u201cOnce I got to UConn, I was fortunate and very blessed to win the BOLD scholarship<\/a> to merge my two favorite things, but even before then, in all my art projects whether it was ceramics, painting, or drawing, I tried to focus on underwater rugby because I\u2019m so passionate about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Underwater rugby<\/a> is a sport that\u2019s played in three dimensions, Bedoya says, because players can move in all directions \u2013 above, below, beside, around \u2013 other players. A weighted ball is carried between two goals that look like metal trash bins in an attempt to score.<\/p>\n

Players wear ear padding for protection, masks over their faces, fins on their feet, and a snorkel. They stay underwater, moving much like minnows in an aquarium, for lengths of time as they move the ball from one end of the pool to the other, coming to the surface long enough to only blow out the water in their snorkel and suck in a deep breath of air.<\/p>\n

The sport shares only a name with the game of land rugby, although the two do involve a similar sort of physicality. In underwater rugby, though, spectators watch the game on video monitors because all the action happens beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

The Connecticut Makos boasts both men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams, although neither are currently training, Bedoya says, because finding a suitable pool has proved difficult. In the interim, if she and her teammates want to play, they join the Newark Sea Lions in New Jersey on weekends.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve gotten concussions before, and I\u2019ve blacked out twice because you\u2019re holding your breath so long. Now that I say it, it is a pretty dangerous sport. But I\u2019ve always been in the water, so I do really enjoy it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Bedoya\u2019s BOLD project, \u201cWomen in Sports: Behind the Lens,\u201d was born from her love for photography and lifetime as an athlete, she says, and started with her interviewing nine female photographers<\/a> who either serve as team photographers in national leagues or otherwise focus their work in athletics.<\/p>\n

That included NHL photographer Sophia Price, Miami Heat team photographer Cristina Sullivan, freelance photographers Laura Wolff and Jody Hou, and NHL photographer China Wong.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy biggest takeaway from talking to all of them to use one word, I\u2019d say determination,\u201d Bedoya says. \u201cYou need to be determined in your work, you need to be professional, and you need to make sure those around you know you\u2019re in the position you\u2019re in for a reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

She learned from the professionals that female sports photographers sometimes aren\u2019t issued accurate credentials to get them into games. Sometimes their work isn\u2019t credited. Sometimes they\u2019re told to step away from the action, so they don\u2019t get hurt.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s unfair, she says.<\/p>\n

With all of that in mind, Bedoya says she looked for a place to practice her sports photography, quickly deciding the sidelines of underwater rugby games was where she wanted to be.<\/p>\n

It was a good place to start, she says, because she was familiar with the sport, even as other photographers might find it strange to jump in a pool, snorkel on mask, fins on feet.<\/p>\n

Bedoya did not use an oxygen tank because she\u2019s not certified for one, so she did what she does during games: She held her breath, and can do so, while moving, for up to 90 seconds, or roughly three laps around the pool.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew the outcome would be great and that I\u2019d bring something to the project that the average photographer wouldn\u2019t because they don\u2019t know the game,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The hardest part was putting the camera, despite its waterproof case, in the water. The next hardest was keeping it underwater because it kept wanting to float. The third hardest was accounting for the bubbles caused by the players\u2019 movements that dotted almost to obscurity the final images.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes I\u2019d see a player with a ball and their teammate was on the other side of the pool, and think to myself, \u2018I could just put my camera down and help,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI needed to manage my headspace. I was there to shoot, not as a player, and needed to get into my zone and start photographing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Daniela
Bedoya\u2019s BOLD project, \u201cWomen in Sports: Behind the Lens,\u201d was born from her love for photography and lifetime as an athlete, she says, and started with her interviewing nine female photographers who either serve as team photographers in national leagues or otherwise focus their work in athletics. (Photo courtesy of Daniela Bedoya)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That resulted in a series of photographs depicting images of determined individuals, powerful in their stance, fierce in their eyes, yet oftentimes graceful in their underwater rhythms. The exhibition was on display in the Art Building in early February.<\/p>\n

Those who didn\u2019t see the show will be able to catch the next, on display in April during the art and art history department\u2019s annual spring BFA art show. As a senior, who will finish classes in December, Bedoya will be one of dozens showing off their work in the Art Building.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was hard for me to say I\u2019m done with this project let me move onto another one my senior year,\u201d she says. \u201cMy advisor told me to do what makes me happy and excited, because no one wants to work on something they\u2019re not inspired by. I\u2019ve learned a lot since last summer and have put those new techniques to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even as recently as early this month, she traveled to New Jersey for a game.<\/p>\n

She also notched another new experience in her hoped-for profession when she was asked recently to photograph a UConn men\u2019s hockey game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018Of course!\u2019 Do I know a lot about hockey? Absolutely not. Have I ever shot a game? No. Would it be a great experience? For sure. I think that was something I got out of my interviews last summer,\u201d she says. \u201cEven if you don\u2019t feel 100% prepared, don\u2019t limit yourself. Just push through and remember that you were asked for a reason. Maybe someone sees something in me that I don\u2019t see. Just have that confidence to say, \u2018Yes, I can do that,\u2019 and then show up with confidence and show you can do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Other photographers might find it strange to jump in a pool with a snorkel and a camera: Not Daniela Bedoya <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":211471,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1711,156,1914,99,2235,2306,2227,2458],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-211457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-culture","category-profile","category-sfa","category-student-life","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-voices","category-uconn-edu-homepage","category-undergraduates"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-29 04:14:15","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211457"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212153,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211457\/revisions\/212153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/211471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211457"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=211457"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=211457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}